by Voss Foster
The door opened behind him. Ixel poked her head out, eyes puffy. "Troll head? It was Broff, I take it?"
I wasn't going to sugarcoat it for her. "It was going to show up eventually."
"I know." She sniffled and nodded. "I want to look at the bastards who killed him. So anything I can help with…I guess I'm cooperating now, sugar."
"Glad to hear it." We could add her to the list to handle later, but Vellius was a direct order from Swift. And we needed to know about this War Blessing bullshit before we ran up against the Hand again. "You're fine with Lenva?"
She nodded. "Doesn't care that I'm a mess, and doesn't care that I tried to kidnap her and take her to these sons of bitches. Can't ask for more than that."
I wanted to bring up Solvar and Darthenal, ask if she was comfortable. I hadn't been able to really be around Lenva since I found out. Like, even if it wasn't her fault, fine. She was still capable of catastrophe. She'd still ended…I couldn't even fathom how many lives. That was probably the only thing that made it at all manageable. At a certain point, the scope of something like that gets too large and it loses some of the impact. That was the saving grace. The number of potential casualties was just too high to sink into my pathetic little human brain.
Gutt and I headed downstairs. Vellius had righted herself, sitting prim and proper on the edge of her seat. She nodded to us as we sat on the sofa opposite her. "So, I assume you want to know about Gelgaath's War Blessing?"
I nodded. "What can you tell us?"
"Quite a bit. Hopefully enough. As a bit of an addendum to my own research, I have a small fascination with archaic magics. Gelgaath's War Blessing dates to before the War of Unity, since it was outlawed and secreted away shortly after its revelation onto the battlefield." She sighed. "It essentially made warfare a matter of who could get the War Blessing off the fastest, and the casualty count became immense for a short time because of it."
Gutt leaned forward. "But what does it actually do?"
"The War Blessing works in phases. First, blood is sacrificed to activate the runes. Then the blood of the living sacrifice is cursed." She ran her fingers across her snake hair. "And in exchange for such a hefty cost to the caster, the cursed blood replicates itself in the nearest chosen target. And as that poison causes them to stop breathing and their heart to seize, it transfers to another, and then another. Anyone within range, friend or foe. Their blood is replaced with that cursed blood, and then it moves on until finally, the caster falls victim to it. It's an unpleasant death, to say the least. " She shuddered in place. "Hence why you all needed to be out of range of it."
I nodded. "I took a blow from it. So how the hell did you survive if you were in the room?"
Her face cast dark and her mouth bowed downward. "Some sacrifices were made, and my knowledge of the spell's inner workings allowed me to eventually counter enough of the components to unravel the work." She dourly turned her head, and I gasped in a very unprofessional manner. About a dozen, maybe more, stumps sat on her head, recently closed over. She'd directed the magic to her snakes instead of to herself.
"Yes." She turned her head back around and sighed. "I still felt the effects, but it was a convenient workaround I don't believe anyone but a gorgon would have been able to pull off."
I cleared my throat and tried to compose myself a little bit more before speaking. "I'm not familiar with gorgon anatomy. Do they grow back?"
"With proper care, they'll grow back in a few years." She reached back and touched the back of her head, cringing. "At any rate, countering the War Blessing is a difficult prospect at best. If they come with it again, run. Unless you all have some secret snake heads you've failed to make public to me before now. Or I suppose they don't have to be snakes."
"Boring old human. If I get hit with that crap, I just die."
"And the only other troll head in the vicinity has long since departed the mortal coil," said Gutt.
Vellius nodded. "Then don't attempt to engage if you value your life."
Lenva came down and walked over then, and she gingerly took up the other armchair, sitting barely on the edge. "I need to make it very clear that I would be willing to leave. I don't need to be responsible for even more death. And Ixel would be safe with me." She scanned around the three of us. "Whatever they're planning, it ends if they have me and Ixel. That doesn't mean they'll be able to keep me with them for any length of time." A wry smile crossed her lips, but quickly faded. "It makes the most sense."
"I've tried talking sense into them before." Vellius pulled her legs up and tucked them underneath herself. "They're terrible at listening."
Gutt nodded. "It's true. We don’t tend to take other people's opinions into consideration when it comes to these jobs."
"Yes, your job is to keep me safe, not just let me go. But you do know you can't stop me any more than they can, right?"
"How do you know they can't stop you?" I had to put it out there. "They broke you out of an impossible sealing. They shut down the communications channels in the Kingdoms. They were able to create a golem of exceptional power. They had access to a hidden spell that's been scrubbed from all the records for being too dangerous."
"And I destroyed two Kingdoms because I was scared."
I looked her dead in the eye, really holding that gaze for the first time since I'd found out about her past. My throat tightened slightly around the words, but they came out all the same. "Are you scared now?"
"No."
"Then I'd rather you stick around here and let us handle things. I don't much care for throwing people to the wolves when we don't have to."
"Come on, Lenva." Vellius rose and gestured behind her. "Let them do the sullen, serious FBI gag by themselves. We won't be able to stop it, and they're bringing in a whole gaggle of other agents to join them in the near future. Best to stay out of the way."
She gave me a knowing glance I wasn't even close to being able to interpret, then they headed upstairs.
I looked over at Gutt. "She still doesn’t value her own life."
"Did you think that would just change?" Gutt snorted. "She still has all the same memories to deal with, only now everyone around her also knows exactly what she did, and she's facing down the prospect of getting more people killed."
"Do you think Vellius is talking to her about binding her back up?" I still had a pang of unease at the thought of it, even if her past was terrible. How much had changed in the five intervening centuries? "Or doing more than that?"
"Doubtful that Vellius would consider killing her outright. They didn't even care much for you killing Jörmungandr. I don't think she's going to outright murder Lenva."
"But lock her back up."
"That's entirely possible." Gutt nodded. "Given what she's done, how dangerous she has the potential to be, it wouldn't surprise me if Vellius needed her back under lock and key when this is over."
My stomach churned around everything. How did I feel about this, and how was I meant to feel about this? I'd been adamant from the beginning that Lenva deserved a chance to live her life, but it was difficult to separate her from Solvar and Darthenal. Instead, I'd just been keeping my distance from her and from the issue at hand: was Lenva safe? And if they tried to put her back in her prison cell, would I still stand up and argue against it?
If I didn't, what kind of person did that make me?
Best I could tell at the moment, the kind of person who needed a double vodka, stat. Too bad we were on the clock.
Chapter Nineteen
It took another half hour before the rest of our team started piling into the house, and I had to admit, Rashem had done an impressive bit of work making room for a full complement. It wasn't magic I was all that familiar with. I'd run across it a few times, making warehouses that could hold twice as much contraband as they'd been built for, that sort of thing. But those were all done with giant open spaces. A disconcerting sensation, but easy enough to adjust.
In the tight confines of the
house, I had to catch my stomach so I didn't hurl. There were too many walls that were just slightly off square, bulging outward in the middle until you looked at them head on. It was like someone had stuck a fisheye lens directly in front of my face. Just when I thought I was getting used to magic, something always came up and bit me in the ass. I had to wonder if King and Swift were still surprised or taken aback by the crap we experienced from time to time.
And honestly, I didn't know which answer was better. Either you worked here long enough to get used to all this bullshit, or you never got to relax because there was always a new something to mess with your head.
Rashem had also extended out the couch so it now seated seven, but whenever I got near it, my stomach flipped a few cartwheels on its way up and out of my throat, so I just stood against the wall while everyone got settled in. King handed me a bulletproof vest as she walked past, then handed one to Vellius. Then Oona and Rothiel, our R and D department, walked through with Zar, a bright red demon in a poorly-tailored black suit. She was our remote transport technician. Then Kimmy and Bancroft.
That got me off the wall and over to Swift. "I assumed you were leaving them behind." Now we had the main staff of the OPA all in one house. A house the enemy knew about and had threatened to destroy. And according to all available evidence, they absolutely had the means to do just that, if they had even half a mind to.
"I'd have preferred it that way, but they insisted."
"Is that all it takes, now? I insist that you give me a ten thousand dollar a year pay raise."
Swift snorted a laugh. "Bancroft also has valuable information and we know the Hand can crack into otherwise secure communications channels. As for Kimmy…you want to tell Kimmy not to do something? Be my guest."
Honestly? I did want to tell her not to do something. I wanted to cuff her and throw her back through the portal. And Bancroft. I didn't like that anyone was here to help us, but especially not them. They weren't agents and they weren't preets. They had no qualifications I knew of in case shit went down.
Fuck that, when shit went down. It wasn't a question, just a matter of time.
"Listen, Wonderhunk. I know exactly what I walked the fuck into if that makes you feel better." Kimmy sat cross-legged in front of the coffee table and set up two laptops. "I'm here to help, so grovel and say thanks or shut the hell up."
"I don't doubt you're here to help—"
"Good. Then shut the hell up." Her computer screens flared to life and she leaned in close. "Rashem, get your skinny gay ass over here and help me patch into your fucking surveillance."
"I'm not gay." He strode over after closing off the remote transport portal. "I'm pansexual, so don't count yourself off the list."
"Yeah, not my type, but you get me in so I can monitor the area and maybe we can talk about a fuck in the shower if we survive." She snapped her hands up and tied her hair back into a tight ponytail, hiding the single platinum blonde streak inside the rope of sleek black. "But only if I like your work."
She was settled into her normal self, so I turned to Bancroft. "You know you don't need to be here either."
"I appreciate your concern, as I'm sure Kimiko does but is unwilling to say. However, I will not be the only spook sidelined today." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, then pushed his glasses higher up his nose. "Now, I did look into Gelgaath's War Blessing. It is an exceedingly rare piece of magic, and currently forbidden in the Hidden Kingdoms. Consequently, it's also forbidden here." He scrolled on his phone, then laid it on the table, facing up. "Because of the extreme nature of the War Blessing, it's closely monitored. These are all the uses of it since it was outlawed, thanks to a little cooperation from some former record keepers I met in college."
So he did have info. Solid info we could maybe try to do something with. And yeah, I guess our communications could be compromised as easily—probably more easily—than the Kingdoms'. Could Bancroft shoot a gun? I had doubts, but at point blank range, even a blind man could get himself a kill.
Gutt picked up the phone and I leaned in to check it out with him. There were a lot of uses of the War Blessing right after it was outlawed, for obvious reasons, but they quickly spread out, gaps of hundreds of years between uses. But one of them was startlingly close to present day. Twenty-seven years ago.
Gutt handed me the phone. "Tell me if that says what I think it says." He started popping his knuckles, methodically pulling one finger after the other as he spoke. "I need confirmation that I'm reading it correctly."
I scanned over that most recent entry, speaking slowly so it could sink into me at the same time it sank into everyone else. "Twenty-seven years ago, for violating the ban on Gelgaath's War Blessing, a sorcerer named Afexius was confined to Second Order Class-B Containment."
Gutt's voice creaked out tight. "Which is the containment facility that had the breakout ten years ago."
The room went silent at Gutt's words. Even Kimmy's typing ceased. All eyes fixed on him.
King was the first to say anything. "A problem for later and you're all smart enough to know that. We can look into it another day. Right now? We have people to keep safe, and hopefully some bastards to catch." She adjusted the fasteners on her bulletproof vest. "If we happen to catch us a sadistic sorcerer with a past, well that's just a bonus, isn't it?"
Still more silence, more staring at Gutt. I didn't want to be the one to follow up on this. The breakout had always been a thing for Gutt. Not for no reason. Not at all. Hundreds of preet criminals loosed into the Mundane was worth getting a tight asshole over. And the fact that a good number of them still hadn't been caught after over a decade? Definitely worthy of at least a little puckering.
Eventually, Gutt nodded. "Of course." His voice still carried the grating undertone that usually came out in the heat of a fight, but he seemed willing to drop the subject. He even gave a flinty stare to King, and she inclined her head in agreement to some silent something.
Swift nodded as well, then turned to me. "Dash, I need you to check in with Lenva once you get suited up. Her job is to stay back and let us handle things, and that needs to be very clear."
"I'll tell her, but between you, me, and God: who's going to stop her if she wants to get involved?"
"Not one damn person. But protocol is protocol, and this is coming directly from Svenson this time. Unofficially, I'd welcome the help of a Class-A if the shit really hits the fan."
Made sense. I slipped on the bulletproof vest, running my hands over the mysterious symbols woven through the material, then headed upstairs. Lenva was in the same room as she'd been before, and she was still with Ixel. Vellius was nowhere to be found, and she hadn't yet rejoined us downstairs. Considering she almost spaghettified herself just getting in, I doubted very much that she'd slipped free of Rashem's protections unnoticed.
I knocked on the jamb to get their attention. Lenva's eyes were back to their normal, gentle blue. "Is everyone here already?"
I nodded and stepped past the guard. "The FBI director has requested that you stay away from the conflict and let us handle it. But also…we can't keep you from doing anything. In case you hadn't figured out how squishy we all are."
She chuckled, and even Ixel smiled. I'd caught her on an upswing in her mood. Made the whole thing a lot less tense.
"If things go bad on my end, I'll shout so you can all get out of here." Lenva was still smiling, but she didn't make eye contact with me as she did. "I wasn't alive for the Hand, obviously. But I crossed paths with those who remember them. They brought the Hidden Kingdoms into great danger too many times. No one could live peacefully, because no one knew when they would release the next calamity upon their neighborhood."
"Well, that is how terrorism tends to work."
Finally, she turned her eyes toward me. "If I tell you all to run, you need to do so. Because I don't think I would feel much remorse for removing a finger of the Hand. So it may be difficult to stop myself if the opportunity were to arise."
"That's a good decision. I killed millions, Dash. I don't know if that's sunk in yet. Millions turned to dust by my fear and my anger. It won't discriminate just because you all have been kind to me. I'm not able to."
"You have more of a handle on it than you think."
"Until I don't. That's how it always goes. I was allowed to roam free because I had a handle on it until Solvar, when I lost control. I'll lose control again, eventually." She never once stopped smiling, and her voice didn't break, didn't tone down with sorrow or tighten with frustration. "The situation with the Hand is personal, and unacceptable. They targeted me. They got humans involved in a conflict you have no part of. And if the Seven-Fingered Hand is allowed to return unfettered, I would be the least worry. You may have noticed I'm a nice Class-A. Not all of us are. So self-restraint is not on my list, should they come into view."
"Not going to lie, sounds like you're not planning on staying back at all."
Her smile widened and she gently touched my shoulder. "I will stay away from the conflict unless I feel it necessary to intervene. And when the threat is handled, whether I'm involved or not, I need to be returned to safety. None of you are outfitted to withstand me if I lose control again, and the Hand wouldn't release me, then simply give up on whatever their plans are for me."
It was a similar refrain to the one she'd been giving since she showed up in the FBI building, but without the desperation. She'd settled on her choice. And most importantly, she wanted to be "returned to safety." No more begging us to murder her.
An improvement, as far as I was concerned. "I need to get back downstairs, but I'll let you both know when surveillance shows them getting close." I caught the fatal flaw before I walked away, thankfully. "Just so we're clear, Ixel, you're not getting involved either. And we can stop you."
